 So over the weekend, our once in future president, Donald J. Trump, said on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo that he would like to see a 60%, 60% tariff on all goods coming from China. I'm not a mathematician, but I think what that means is that if you buy the $500 China thing, it's now going to cost $800. If that comes to fruition, Nick will check me up at half time. Previously, Trump has talked about removing China from most favored nation trading status, which is always hard to say in a row like that. That would effectively be a 40% tariff, depending on how it all shakes out. Plus, he's been talking about a universal baseline tariff on everything, including the non-communist countries of 10% across the board. So, Catherine, using your human voice, can you explain to the crowd and including the people who are kind of sympathetic or tariff curious why you think this would be a terrible idea? The very, very basic answer to that question is, it's just going to make stuff cost more for Americans. I can't think of other ways to convey that idea because it seems like that should be enough. Hey, we buy a lot of stuff from China. If we did this elaborate and punitive tariff plan, we might buy a little bit less stuff, which is the goal according to tariff backers. We should be less economically engaged with China is fundamentally the idea here. But we wouldn't buy zero stuff. We would still buy quite a lot of stuff. That would be way more expensive. And I don't know if you know this Matt, but a thing that people are kind of worried about right now in the economy and our weird economy that I guess we're going to maybe talk about later is stuff is expensive. The regular stuff that they just buy feels like it is more expensive than it should be. There are a bunch of reasons for that. But a big one is because we tax the stuff, we put taxes on the stuff. Those taxes would not be paid by an abstract idea that is foreigners, they would be paid by us. And I for one would not like to pay more for my stuff. I would just like to buy it from China. If we put let's get the red Chinese out of this for a second. If we put a 10% tariff on everything, including the friendies, doesn't that make it the more likely for us to build our own stuff? And so then when we give money, we give it to friendly Americans, it would make us more likely on the margins that we would build our own stuff. But we also have a whole bunch of rules in this country that make that stuff really expensive. So some of the things are artificial like minimum wage laws, or, you know, government imposed child labor laws, some of the things are just that we are a rich country. And so labor just costs a lot more here. But the stuff that we might make here, it's true, would be made here, but it would be more expensive stuff still. And sometimes it would be less good stuff, right? Like other countries have people that are good at making specific things that we're not great at like semiconductors. And we should buy them from the people that can make them well and cheaply. Nick, there was a Reuters episode poll last August, showing that 66% of Americans said that they would rather vote for a president who wants to have even higher tariffs against red China. If Americans want higher tariffs, you are like the last guy since Barry McGuire, who insists on talking about red China. I love it so much. Every time that says that it warms my robot. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like they're reds. Yeah. But shouldn't the federal government give Americans what they want good and hard? No. Why not? Why should there be more as Catherine was laying out? And this, by the way, we can focus on Trump and his trade wars and the 10% baseline tariff. One thing that is kind of interesting about that. And this is beyond economic theory. It's more political economy. Basically, what he's saying is he is going to any country that has a tariff on our stuff, he is going to punish them by doing the same tariff or worse. And that's kind of an interesting jaw boning exercise. But you know, one of the great triumphs and Matt Welch, you've written about this endlessly. It seems like you can't shut up about it in many contexts. But one of the great triumphs of the past 30, 40 years has been the reduction in global tariffs. Generally speaking, that has been a boon to people in poor countries and people in wealthier countries. So, you know, tariffs are attacks, as Catherine was pointing out, and they're not paid. They're not going to be paid by communist Chinese party members. They're going to be paid by working class people who have the least amount of discretionary income. When you shop at Walmart and 90% of the stuff in Walmart probably comes from China are pretty close. That all goes up by 60%. And then most of the other stuff is actually coming from other countries. So that goes up 10%. I don't think that's great. And it's not going to increase jobs. So that analysis, when you increase exports, you increase jobs. So and when you increase imports, you generally increase buying power, purchasing power. It's really remarkable that after three and a half years of griping about inflation, Republicans are preparing to nominate a man whose signature policy would dramatically raise prices for most Americans. But tariffs don't just raise prices for Americans. They also do is hurt American producers. And it is a somewhat forgotten fact that in 2018 and 2019, when Trump was initially raising tariffs on some Chinese goods, you had Trump also passed a $30 billion bailout fund for American farmers. So that cost Americans money. That was $30 billion because China put up retaliatory tariffs. So there's no such thing as a one way tariff. This is why we call trade wars trade wars is because one country fires a tariff shot, and then the other country fires a tariff shot back. And that is bad. Wars are bad tariff war trade wars are bad. And Trump wants to start one very badly. It appears with China. Peter, a follow up question, if you will, if I will, or if anyone will. So in all the articles, not you, who Matt? I think we know. That's not now when I question. If so, in all these articles, we have a lot of time. Globalist, you know, Cuck Press out there, and they've been overwhelmingly negative about Trump and tariffs. And in paragraph 17, you'll get to and Joe Biden since taking office has largely kept Donald Trump's 2018 tariffs in place. We're going to talk about the aforementioned weird economy a little bit later. But can you talk to us just a little bit about what if any daylight there is existing between Joe Biden, President Joseph Robinette Biden, the third, his tariff policy and Donald Trump's. The daylight that exists is that Trump is proposing draconian ridiculous like fantasy land tariffs of 60% like we mentioned earlier. And I don't see Joe Biden proposing that. At the same time, Biden does seem to be continuing the trade policy, the tariff policy that was put in place under the Trump administration. And I think we would see maybe not a maybe not a sort of a nuclear trade war like we might see under Donald Trump, but a kind of a trade war like a proxy trade war under Joe. Conventional weapons, trade, just conventional weapons, right? You know, a small war of the kind that Joe Biden seems to be very much in the mood to start these days. Well, and Biden also is big on the buy America stuff, which is, you know, again, to keep money and dollars in industry here. And that's also bullshit that has the bad effect of making things cost smaller, but also it just means stuff doesn't get done. You know, part of this, Matt, and this is kind of out of fashion, but to talk about things like comparative advantage where, you know, do you want one of one of the industries that has mostly gone missing over the past 60 years in America is the textile industry. And do you really want your kids to grow up to be like hooking carpets? You know, is that your dream? Make America great again by bringing back these sweeps and coal miner, you know, child coal miners and stuff like that. It's that is a loom. We should be doing better developments in economic history. We should be doing better, higher and higher level industry, as well as services and things like that. And that is part of, you know, this has been, I think, a failure on the part of liberal economics or economists and libertarians, as well as conservatives who aren't idiots and a lot of liberal, including liberal progressives who will do whatever they whatever they can for union workers, which often means becoming protectionist. But this it's a better world when you can buy lots of stuff from lots of different places and, you know, people in America are not working less in factories and more in offices or, you know, whatever. Yeah, so the the Biden administration's trade policy has often not been directly through tariffs, even though, like I said, they have continued most of the Trump tariff policy. They have pushed industrial policy through subsidies, through defense of the Jones Act, through policies designed to promote, encourage or require union work. And that has made everything more expensive as well. Catherine, Nikki Haley, your Republican girlfriend, her Boston marriage partner. Yeah, exactly. What's the Boston marriage partner? That's when the two spinsters live together. Yeah, figure it out. God, it's the last to know. I've only had that in Boston. That was a clip from the latest episode of the Reason Roundtable to watch another clip. Click here to watch the whole episode. Click here and make sure to subscribe to the Reason Roundtable. You'll be glad you did.